FILE - in this Sept. 13, 2017 file photo activists of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) protest against the conflict between North Korea and the USA with masks of the North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, right, and the US president Donald Trump, left, in front of the US embassy in Berlin, Germany. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored the Geneva-based group "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons." (Britta Pedersen/dpa via AP)

By Michael Birnbaum |The Washington Post

BRUSSELS – The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a recognition of its efforts to avoid nuclear conflict at a time when it seems more likely than at any other period in recent memory.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that it was honoring the group in part because of its support for an international Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was approved in July by the United Nations and opened for signatures last month. The 10-year-old grass roots civil society movement pushes for nuclear disarmament across the world.

The committee recognized the group for “its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons,” chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said as she announced the prize in Oslo.

“There is a popular belief among people all over the world that the world has become more dangerous, and that there is a tendency where we experience that the threats of nuclear conflict have come closer,” Reiss-Andersen said. The group has been successful at “engaging people in the world who are scared of the fact that they are supposed to be protected by atomic weapons,” she said.

She said that the executive director of the Geneva-based group, Beatrice Fihn, “was delighted” when informed of the prize. In a measure of the sudden surge in interest in the group, its website was down Friday morning following the announcement. The coalition, which was modeled on international efforts to ban land mines, says it has branches in more than 100 countries.

Fihn has been an outspoken critic of President Trump and the White House’s approach to nuclear diplomacy. At the U.N. ceremony last month as the nuclear ban treaty opened for signatures, she said she hoped that the countries who have not supported the ban – including the United States and the world’s other nuclear powers – would soon change their position.

“We are putting nuclear weapons in the same category as other unacceptable weapons,” Fihn said at the ceremony, according to a transcript of her remarks. “It strengthens the norm that weapons that cause unacceptable harm for civilians cannot remain legal – and that nuclear weapons are no longer an exception to these norms.”

The Nobel Committee said that the award was not intended as a hit against any particular country or leader, but rather an effort to encourage all nations to give up their nuclear weapons in the name of a safer world.

The award came at a moment in which world peace seems especially fragile. North Korea in recent months has embarked on a series of ambitious tests of nuclear technology, and now appears poised to threaten mainland United States. President Trump and the North Korean government have traded an escalating series of insults and threats of war.

Meanwhile, Trump is poised next week to decertify Iran’s compliance with the deal limiting its nuclear program, a step that European allies worry would derail the effort to delay Tehran’s acquiring nuclear weapons.

Separately, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has come under fire for failing to stop or condemn the ethnic cleansing of her nation’s Rohingya minority in recent months.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos just five days after Colombian voters narrowly voted against the peace accord that was the basis for the Nobel honor. The Nobel Committee said it hoped the prize would encourage the two sides in the conflict – one of the world’s longest-running – to keep pursuing peace despite the setback. Since then, the peace process has held, although the role of the Nobel remains unclear.